Genius vs Talent: an Ancestral Redemption Song
Talent isn’t something I’m certain about, just not sure if it exists or not. That’s just my opinion.
I feel more sure about genius. Personally, I think everyone is as genius in some way at some thing, but talent is so wishy washy I’ve no idea what it’s really supposed to mean.
I’ve heard about some the great talents of modern British celebrity, although I doubt they’d be accused of genius: Jamie Cullum and whatsaname with his hootenanny, Jools Holland, although personally I think he should leave his poor old nanny out of it. And then there’s Andrew Lloyd Weber. But whereof we cannot speak positively let us remain silent henceforth. We’ll speak no more of those three today.
Instead, let us reflect on those other three scintillating greats of Britain’s got talent: Andrew Lloyds-Cashpoint, Calamity James and Drools Benelux.
Seriously, what on earth is wrong with people? Is this a case of suspension of belief in our own experience of sensory data? Is there anyone who actually thinks Andrew Lloyds-Cashpoint is a genius dramatist or songwriter like Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein or like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Is he worth his hundreds of millions by merit of his talent? Personally, I’d put him closer to George Formby and Mrs Mills than Leonard Bernstein or Oscar Hammerstein.
His big inspiration and forerunners were none other than Gilbert and Sullivan, who wrote operas about one hundredth as good as Mozart. Those two theatrical musical clowns are total unknowns anywhere else in the world because their music doesn’t merit much attention objectively speaking.
The musical buffoonery of Gilbert and Sullivan is still adored by the posh of England though, because of how it celebrates so affectionately the omni genocidal agency of the British Empire, and because of how it criticises it so mildly its elites, its military, its colonial influence; all of these are portrayed with gentle mockery as if adorable but slightly silly instead of what they are: genocidal and criminally insane, aka evil.
Being the modern version of such pillars of genocidal colonialist culture as Gilbert and Sullivan, and being adored by those who share Gilbert and Sullivan’s fond affection for evil, old Lloyds-Cashpoint can hardly be described as a cultural agent of human progress or liberation. Theirs is the music fed upon by imperialist monsters before consigning thousands to die at a pen’s stroke or a button’s push.
Let us be absolutely clear. The likes of Calamity Jamie, Drools Benelux and Andrew Lloyds-Cashpoint are devoid of any artistic merit and their only source of merit is that their faces fit: they are white middle class, mediocre, tame, vanilla, and easily bought and paid for. They are bbc. They are royal variety show. They are what the establishment promotes precisely because they are unlikely to eclipse the subhuman cultural-nonentity elites with any real radiance.
I remember having a similar conversation at Ronnie Scott’s in the 70s, a few of us. Back then it was Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball: the establishment’s jazz picks; hackneyed faded carbon copies of New Orleans trad, just a step away from the crudely racist old black and white minstrel show. They got all the bbc with the tv and radio, they got the recording contracts, they got the money, the houses, the security. They had the official label: made in England.
Meanwhile, the real pioneers of London Jazz like Tubby (Hayes) and Phil (Seamen) ate candles. Not all and not always, but it happened. You may notice I call one set of England and the other set of London. Why do you think? The hood has always been where reality bites hardest. It was always the posh in a rural idyl, the urban in sooty grit. These London bebop pioneers were sneered at and poo-pooed by the establishment. Why?
Two reasons that I could tell: First, a lot of them were Jewish, like Ronnie, or even worse, West Indian like his guitarist, Ernest Ranglin, or African like Ginger Johnson. That was what Ronnie and some of the others felt. Just look at the old club 11 where London’s jazz scene started, with Harry Morris managing, Flash Winston as MC, and their whole motley crew, Ronnie, Laurie, Jeff, all Jewish. With majority African, Caribbean and Jewish people around, Club 11 went on to become the Roaring 20s, then Columbos. If you know anything about the London scene back then you’ll know what that means: the edgy heart of the mix.
Then Ronnie Scott’s first club in Gerrard Street, under the Loon Fung supermarket. An edgy place full of Jews and Blacks where White English were a minority and where Gypsy Larry slept in his lighting booth off hours. I can’t remember any gays, but I’m sure it was in the mix there somewhere amongst the strippers and hookers, the pimps and the pushers, the all round circus cabaret of colourful round peg characters orbiting the neighbourhood.
As a child in that world I can honestly say I met very few people who felt threatening. Even those with a rep for violence were usually fine; and infused throughout that whole scene I felt something positive I didn’t find so much in the straight world of squares. Certain positive core values predominated because of the nature of the music and the mix of people playing it together.
The second reason the real Jazz heads were excluded or disapproved of was because of their often alternative lifestyle, especially, on the face of it, the scourge of drugs, which ended up destroying so many of the best.
It wasn’t a moral thing, the establishment is itself established upon immorality. We all know they are the mr big drug dealers, pimps, paedophiles, traffickers and serial-genociders, altogether the most vicious criminals the world has known.
It was the Jazzer’s rejection of divide and rule and their rejection of materialism; that’s why they were excluded. It was their implicit recognition of the spiritual and of Afrocentric perspectives and their rejection of racist white supremacism, their radical bebop music raving at the unnatural state humanity has been reduced to and craving for our natural state of Ubuntu.
No wonder the establishment kept the door shut tight tight against the real Jazz.
Personally, I am mildly curious to see how our music is received by them today. Has their ability to co-opt alternative world views grown to a point where they are finally comfortable with the music that signals their own end, as all roots reggae has done from Bob Marley and as all Jazz has done from Buddy Bolden. It signals their end by outshining them in human beauty and by showing them up for the miserable wretches they truly are.
Pardon the plug, but you might want to read the debut novel ‘The Songtree …’ on that whole topic.
Anyway, point is, Ye Olde England’s establishment has always discouraged the real Jazz, pushing forward today’s celeb stooges like Calamity, Benelux and the other one instead.
I’m sure the three stooges have heard the greats so I’m just as sure they find it embarrassing to be called great or even significant musicians, but at least there’s stacks of 50 pound notes for them to dry their tears on if they start feeling sore when guys like me slap them round the room a bit just for fun.
Such acts as Benelux, Calamity and Lloyds-Cashpoint are promoted by the tyranny of mediocrity in order to shore up all defences against any possible assault by excellence. It’s funny, but only for a moment. It gets boring quickly watching such mediocre pillars of genocidal culture being constantly outshone by genuine creativity. I said I wouldn’t mention them again, but I feel compelled to admit that even Holland, Cullum and Lloyd Weber could do a better job in my opinion. Credit where credit’s due. It’s nothing personal.
I reckon the king of their division, the ultimate corporate capitalist show biz talent, has to be the french guy called le Petomane. He could and did fart any tune the audience requested, in full, in time and in tune, live on stage infront of packed theatres. Personally, if Andrew Lloyds-Cashpoint, Calamity Jamie or Drools Benelux could do that I might begin to be impressed. Wouldn’t you?
Cheap satire aside, there is a serious point here: we all know how commerciality has harmed people-music since the 80s. We all know how the real Jazz has always been excluded and oppressed by its very definition as an alternative and anti-racist world view.
But we need to remind ourselves of is this fact: Our true music has always won!
It is winning now!
It will always win!
The corporate muzak of the Calamity James gang is still deader than Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, and he’s been in the ground for 70 years! Bird lives!
There’s happening music out there. Not just my preferred styles and artists, not just roots reggae and jazz, but all sorts, real music, people music. Chinese guzheng, Japanese shakuhachi, Congo rumba, Indian sitar, Irish jig, it is all living still, and I dig it all when it’s done right. Hip-hop and indie too, country or rock: it’s all rocknroll, the sound of organic human life.
Bird once told Max Roach of a vision he’d had of ‘the music of the whole world’. Over the years I’ve heard musicians from worldwide traditions playing together in diverse combinations. Even myself, I’ve worked with Gambian, Tanzanian, Nigerian, Chinese, as well as Caribbean and so on. I think Bird’s vision will emerge when all such musical traditions of humanity swing together. Now, wouldn’t that be a rapture worthy of the name.
In my Ancestral griot tradition music is the pedagogy, all knowledge and information about history and the world is taught through song.
I believe every human has potential genius in some faculty or faculties. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that is what makes us human.
The very term Homo sapiens implies our uniqueness is something cognitive: it points to our unique double reflexivity, the unique genius of our genus: our ability to think about ourselves thinking! Genius is the effect of reflecting our definitive sapiens nature.
A great stone-axe maker from 10k years ago, a great pianist from today, a great horse whisperer, a great gardener, a great driver, a great talker, a great scientist, a great poet, a great chef, a great cleaner, a great peace-maker, a great fisherman, a great builder; ‘genius’ is writ all through our stories like ‘Brighton’ through a stick of rock.
But I’m not sure I believe in talent, like I said. It’s a concept used to divide us and justify elitism. And I don’t think we need talented elites in music or anything else, I think what we really need is to recognise and manifest our own individual and collective human genius. And to share it, pool it, use it for a greater mission: the mission of humanity.
Serious point: a lot of people have not made it through. And many of our greatest souljahs have fallen along the way, especially in the Americas holocaust of Youessay and Jahmaker etc. They live in us all to this day. We owe it to their memory to stand. And what we must stand for is music, plain and simple. Music is the ‘hammer’ (Check Bob Marley), music is the ‘small axe’ (Bob again), not the Brighton rock but the ‘Trenchtown rock’ that when it hits you feel no pain (Bob again.)
We owe it like Karma to honour the good faith and good cause of our traumatised but tireless fallen Ancestors, especially to our people who had no children and to those who had no parents. We shall carry their purpose and their memory forth, we shall bear their spirit high upon our shoulders. In all the ends of the land, in every hood and garrison, the Ancestral beat is rising.
Music IS the ‘redemption song’ of humanity! (Check Bob Marley again.) Music IS the food of love.
Play on.
For more on all topics to do with Abracadia and its work, don’t forget to check Abracadia’s weekly spoken word offering at the ‘Bit Of Soul Podcast’. Come and say hi, pass by for a try. Be great to see you there. Just roll up anytime to listen, chill and reason at the lush and refreshing oasis that is Abracadia.
Until such time - In Ubuntu
Remi